Shed Skin Python-to-C++ Compiler 0.0.21, Help needed

[Mark Dufour]

Hi all,

I have recently released version 0.0.20 and 0.0.21 of Shed Skin, an
optimizing Python-to-C++ compiler. Shed Skin allows for translation of
pure (unmodified), implicitly statically typed Python programs into
optimized C++, and hence, highly optimized machine language. Besides
many bug fixes and optimizations, these releases add the following
changes:

-support for 'bisect', 'collections.deque' and 'string.maketrans'
-improved 'copy' support
-support for 'try, else' construction
-improved error checking for dynamic types
-printing of floats is now much closer to CPython

For more details about Shed Skin and a collection of 27 programs, at a
total of about 7,000 lines, that it can compile (resulting in an
average speedup of about 39 times over CPython and 11 times over Psyco
on my computer), please visit the homepage at:

http://mark.dufour.googlepages.com

I could really use more help it pushing Shed Skin further. Simple ways
to help out, but that can save me lots of time, are to find smallish
code fragments that Shed Skin currently breaks on, and to help
improve/optimize the (C++) builtins and core libraries. I'm also
hoping someone else would like to deal with integration with CPython
(so Shed Skin can generate extension modules, and it becomes easier to
use 'arbitrary' external CPython modules such as 're' and 'pygame'.)
Finally, there may be some interesting Master's thesis subjects in
improving Shed Skin, such as transforming heap allocation into stack-
and static preallocation, where possible, to bring performance even
closer to manual C++. Please let me know if you are interested in
helping out, and/or join the Shed Skin mailing list.


Thanks!
Mark Dufour.
-- 
"One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code"
- Ken Thompson